ANTS ARE OUR CO-RULERS OF THE LAND. An estimated ten thousand trillion strong
worldwide, they weigh very roughly the same as all of humanity. They abound every
where except on icy mountain peaks and around the Poles. From underground to tree
tops, they serve as the chief predators of insects and other invertebrates and the principal
scavengers of small dead bodies. Although their 12,000 known species compose only
about 1.4 percent of the world's insect species, their share of the collective body weight
is easily ten times greater.
I was first drawn to these remarkable creatures almost 70 years ago as a boy in
Washington, D.C. Inspired by the tales of Frank Buck and other wildlife adventurers,
I launched my own expeditions from our family apartment into the "jungles" of Rock
Creek Park. Ants especially intrigued me because of an article by William M. Mann in
the August 1934 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC: "Stalking Ants, Savage and Civilized." Mann
was also director of the National Zoo, hence doubly my
hero. The myrmecological lineage continued decades
later with Mark Moffett, who earned a Ph.D. under my
Ir direction at Harvard and whose groundbreaking pho
tography of ants focuses in this issue on army ants.
Ants are important for more than their ubiquity
and environmental impact. They also exhibit social
behavior as exotic as any we may ever hope to find on
another planet. For most of each year colonies consist
only of females: queens that reproduce for the colony
and infertile workers that conduct all the labor. Males
Wilson at 13, looking for bugs in Mobile,
Alabama, during the summer of 1942.
are bred and kept for short periods, exclusively for
ELLISMACLEOD
the insemination of virgin queens. The communication
systems of ants are radically nonhuman. Where we use sound and sight, they depend
primarily on pheromones, chemicals secreted by individuals and smelled or tasted
by nestmates. Since the brain of an ant weighs less than one-millionth as much
as a human brain, it is not surprising that a given species produces just ten to twenty
signals. Unlike human language, these messages are entirely instinctual.
These marvelous little creatures have been on Earth for more than 140 million
years. The most complex social organizations among them, such as those of the army
ants and leafcutter ants, rank with Earth's greatest wildlife spectacles. Ants easily
outlasted the dinosaurs, and they will easily outlast humanity should we stumble. O
ARTBY JOHNDAWSON(FACINGPAGE).TENSPECIESREPRESENTED
LIFE-SIZE,FROMSMALLESTTOLARGEST:OLIGOMYRMEXSP.(AFRICA,ASIA, AUSTRALIA);SOLENOPSISINVICTA(FIRE
ANT, NATIVETOSOUTHAMERICA);OECOPHYLLASP.(AFRICA,ASIA, AUSTRALIA);POLYRHACHISSP.(AFRICA,ASIA, AUSTRALIA);CEPHALOTESSP.(CENTRALAND SOUTHAMERICA);DACETON
ARMIGERUM(SOUTHAMERICA);ATTASP.(NORTHAND SOUTHAMERICA);ODONTOMACHUSSP.(GLOBALTROPICS);MYRMECIASP.(AUSTRALIA);CAMPONOTUSGIGAS(SOUTHEASTASIA)